News

Defending national shearing circuits champion Leon Samuels showed he’s in the right sort of form for another national title bid when he won the Pleasant Point’s Gymkhana Shears Open final on Saturday. The Invercargill gun’s win, by a comfortable margin of more than four points from runner-up...

The 10th annual Heartland Bank Young Auctioneers’ Competition was held at Canterbury Park this week. Of the eight contestants vying for the championship, four were representing PGG Wrightson including Matt Holmes (Canterbury/West Coast), Ben Wright (Manawatū), Russell Moloney (Otago), and Brook...

This week The Country’s Jamie Mackay is joined by PGG Wrightson’s GM for wool, Grant Edwards, to take a look at the wool market this month. There are concerns around the current Covid19 cases in Christchurch. There are hopes that it can be ring fenced and controlled. Fine wool is hitting record...

The Country’s Jamie Mackay is joined by PGG Wrightson’s General Manager for Livestock and Rural Real Estate, Peter Newbold, to take a look rural property this month. All rural sectors have gone gang-busters recently. Newbold says that he cannot recall a time that they have had this many properties...

There is a growing number of consumers around the world who are prepared to buy organic meat and wool bedding products at a substantial premium, to provide assurances that what they eat and where they sleep is free of chemical residues. Over the past 15 years PGG Wrightson’s International Sales &...

Danielle Boyd was appointed PGG Wrightson’s Northland wool representative in August, a part time role she juggles with contract shearing. Danielle has been around wool all her life. Some of her earliest memories are of being in various Northland wool sheds while her parents worked on shearing gangs...

Doug McKay is PGG Wrightson wool representative for Mid Canterbury, Central Canterbury and Banks Peninsula. His patch is one of the country’s biggest finishing units, where tens of thousands of lambs are brought into the region to be finished. However, stretching from the Rangitata River in the...

PGG Wrightson wool representative Peter McCusker was recently on hand to help kick off the annual Merino and Halfbred shearing at spectacular Canterbury high country sheep station “Mt White”. Mt White is well known amongst the high country farming community, as many have either worked there as a...

We are now at the peak of the merino wool sale season. Global demand for fine luxury fibre continues to fuel strong prices for the excellent quality of merino wools that growers have produced this year. As a consequence, prices for fine wool lines are on par or close to where they sat three years...

Mid Canterbury brothers Simon and Roger Bonifant farm one of the most respected farms in a district that boasts the country’s richest arable soils, running their 550 hectare fully irrigated properties at Wakanui and Seafield, east of Ashburton, as a mixed cropping arable unit. That incorporates...

New Zealand’s Virtual Saleyard bidr® is now regularly livestreaming both PGG Wrightson North and South Island wool auctions. The wool auction is the default selling mechanism for the New Zealand wool industry, and is the most preferred buying platform for New Zealand wool exporters representing the...

‘‘I used to see the shearers roll up in their Mk II Zephyrs and Holden utes and I used to think ‘gosh I want to be like that too, one day". Our very own wool classer and master woolhandler, Mr Bell. Involved with shearing since the Merino Shears began in Alexandra in 1961. Read the full stuff...

By the end of the winter the award-winning Marlborough business Higgins Shearing will be no more: Sarah Higgins, who founded it in January 2016, is in the process of selling her rural service company, but that will be by no means the end of her world record-setting shearing career. She’ll probably...

Based in Dunback, Scott Tomlinson farms lambs and bulls. He uses GO-BEEF to help source their two year old bulls in the Autumn and GO-LAMB for winter and summer lambs. Scott says GO-STOCK helps with the flexibility of sourcing stock and having the freed up capital has really helped the development...

Listen now. The Country’s Jamie Mackay is joined by PGG Wrightson’s National Dairy Sales Manager, Jamie Cunninghame, to talk about New Zealand’s livestock market. Mackay jokes that Fielding-Manawatu is the farming capital of New Zealand. Cunninghame agrees as he is based there. Spring is in full...

Slow spring growth holding back optimism, while other conditions provide encouragement Overall, spring weather across the lower North Island has been cold and wet, resulting in slower feed growth rates and pasture covers than farmers hope for. While dairy farmers had reasonable calving, many have...

Bladeshearing veteran Tony Dobbs, pictured representing New Zealand at Waimate in 2019. Having contemplated retirement when the board was last year the scene of his 100th win he's back this week to stick with the faith amid declining numbers of shearers with clippers. Where have all the bladies gone...

Reduced numbers and encouraging meat schedules mean prices should firm Dairy beef sales are about to kick off, with the first North Island sale mid-October. Regular sales at all the main saleyards will progress from there, particularly in greater Waikato and Northland, where calving occurs earlier...